OINE 1.

The Beit el-Wali Temple of Ramesses II

By Herbert Ricke, George R. Hughes, and Edward F. Wente

In March 1960 the United Arab Republic appealed to the world through the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to send archeologists to Nubia in order to save the antiquities -- discovered or undiscovered -- threatened with destruction by submersion under the great new lake to be created by the High Dam under construction on the Nile south of Aswan. The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago was one of the first institutions to respond. Before March was ended a team was in Cairo arranging for the use of a boat to make a hasty preliminary survey of the Nile Valley in Egyptian Nubia in order to select sites and plan field operations.

A four-year concession was granted, from 1960 to 1964. The initial plans for areas to be surveyed excavated changed a few times (as documented in the prefaces for OINE 1-10), and the project eventually recorded materials in several areas from Abu Simbel south into the Sudan. To date (2010), ten volumes have been published, two more are in process, and a few more are under consideration.